Formation of episodic magnetically driven radiatively cooled plasma jets in the laboratory

We report on experiments in which magnetically driven radiatively cooled plasma jets were produced by a 1 MA, 250 ns current pulse on the MAGPIE pulsed power facility. The jets were driven by the pressure of a toroidal magnetic field in a “magnetic tower” jet configuration. This scenario is characterized by the formation of a magnetically collimated plasma jet on the axis of a magnetic “bubble”, confined by the ambient medium. The use of a radial metallic foil instead of the radial wire arrays employed in our previous work allows for the generation of episodic magnetic tower outflows which emerge periodically on timescales of ∼30 ns. The subsequent magnetic bubbles propagate with velocities reaching ∼300 km/s and interact with previous eruptions leading to the formation of shocks.